In response to Walmart's smiley face copyright battle, Make Magazine posted this YouTube video featuring Mr. Smiley himself in his first serious role, reading from The Great Dictator - Charlie Chaplin's satire about Nazi Germany where he plays a poor Jewish barber that is a doppleganger to the dictator "Adenoid Henkyl."

I haven't seen the film yet, but with character names like Garbitsch and Mr. Agar, you can bet I'm gonna go right out and rent it. There's even a dictator of Bacteria, named Benzini Napolini; delightfully unsubtle, I'd say.

27 November 2007

A few months ago, an activist friend of mine was very excited to share that the US flag as we know it, has not only had many incarnations throughout history, but more importantly, the orientation of the lines is significantly symbolic.

The Stars and Stripes that we Americans have been taught to believe is the sole representation of our patriotic troth has a peace time alter-ego: The Civil or Civilian Flag.

Furthermore, Old Glory, as we've come to know it, is specifically a battle flag - meant to indicate a military presence in war time.

We've engaged in warfare all of this century, the better part of last and much of the century before that; but was that supposed to be the idea? Did we forget about the flag because we gave up on peace?

It further begs the question, was this collective forgetfulness deliberate?